Propos d'Emmanuel Levinas

Information

Summary :

Michel Field welcomes philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who just published a collection of his course materials, Dieu, la Mort et le Temps, and asks him about the lateral character of his approach to philosophy at the crossroads of different civilizations. Levinas also talks about one of his favourite themes, the relation between one human and another.

Context

Emmanuel Levinas was born in 1906 in Kovno (Lithuania) and died in Paris in 1995. Born to a Jewish family that spoke Russian, he moved to Ukraine in 1914. It was there that he discovered the great authors of Russian literature, Pouchkine, Tolstoï, Tourgueniev, Dostoïevski, and that he opened up his mind to metaphysical questions. In 1923, young Emmanuel left to go study philosophy in Strasbourg; he discovered Bergson's theories there and became friends with Maurice Blanchot. In 1928 and 1929, he went to Freiburg to take classes by Edmond Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In 1930, he definitely settled in Paris, after having published his thesis, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl?s Phenomenology. Drafted in 1939, he was captured at the beginning of the war; he spent the next five years in a German Stalag. During his captivity, he was nevertheless able to write most of Existence and Existents. During the 60s and 70s, Emmanuel Levinas taught philosophy in universities, in Poitiers, Nanterre and at the Sorbonne. In 1961, he published his doctoral thesis, Totality and Infinity.

With phenomenology as a starting point, Levinas defined ethics as an interrogation of ontology (meaning the definition of humans) through the sudden emergence of another person. Unlike in traditional Western philosophy, he refused to give this subject a definition. The face is a person's privileged side, which manifests the other person's mystery in a breathtaking way. Others are transcendence, and from there, we reach God.

Today, the Institute for Levinassian Studies, founded by Benny Lévy, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, teaches the philosopher's way of thinking.

Aurélia Caton

Transcription

Michel Field

Good evening, Emmanuel Levinas."God, Death, Time", these are texts from classes that you gave during the 1975-1976 school year, so I'm going to introduce you.You are probably one of the most important philosophers of French thought, but at the same time, many people do not know you, because you don't, how shall I say it, you don't get a lot of media coverage, as we now say.

Emmanuel Lévinas

That's true, I don't know my readers at all.There are probably some that have been following me without manifesting themselves, or else they manifest themselves intimately, not in public today - perhaps a bit like I have the occasion to, maybe the luck or the misfortune to, rather.

Michel Field

And what do you think, exactly, about this sort of noise, of racket, of publicity, which is now supposed to surround the release of a book, when you compare it with a solitary and rigourous mental exercise?

Emmanuel Lévinas

I obviously don't trust this dragging of general ideas or of intimate ideas into public discussions without preparation, without having a previous contact with the texts,and for me, teaching things verbally always presupposes digging deeper into written texts, where physical gestures are as important as written gestures.

Michel Field

Well, I'm going to introduce you quickly.You were born in Lithuania in 1906, you first exiled yourself in Russia, then in France, in Strasbourg, where you started studying philosophy at the same time that you were building a friendship with Maurice Blanchot.You went to Freiburg in 1928 to study under Husserl and Heidegger, and then, obviously, there was the war, the camps, the rise of Nazism, and we can say that this tragedy of history is inscribed at the core of your thoughts.It seems, well, you'll let me know if it's a good summary or description, that your thinking intersects with areas that are usually kept quite separate from each other, and you've tirelessly tried to build a dialogue between traditions that were obliviousI'm especially referring to the tradition of Western philosophy and of Hebrew philosophy, but also Russian literature which was very important to you, and German phenomenology...Is this intersection situation, was it a choice or is it rather a consequence of this century's history?

Emmanuel Lévinas

It wasn't a choice, in the sense that it's not about going through them and asking ourselves each time, what do I need to remember, right?An authentic way of thinking, sincere thought requires texts, the great texts especially, those few great texts that are more in agreement with each other than we think, but freedom and calling upon different authors is certainly useful, but it's not at aIt's about thinking that attaches itself to an excellent expression, an expression, a great expression, and that might be the source of a sort of extension and a genuine discussion.

Michel Field

We can say that you are the leading thinker with regards to the Other person, with regards to Others, and you have always tried to think about what really constitutes the relationship with the Other person.

Emmanuel Lévinas

Right there, you happened to mention one of my favourite themes, not at all because it's a theme that leads to great developments, but because it seems to be at the core of what is human.The essence of a human.And if you [misunderstood] at the level of this reflection, there has always been the search for what is genuinely human and what is the, if you will, the relationship with the other man.The relationship with the other man seemed to me to be the definition, the main feature, the great mystery of humanity, if you will, and even of man.

Michel Field

So then...

Emmanuel Lévinas

Before we dive into this theme, such as the theme of community, as if you wanted an extension of knowledge by processing a considerable amount of data,I've always been looking for - and I still think that's it's very important to find them - a genuine dialogue between people and a real conversation between - closely observed with regards to quotes and the adoption of definitive formulas - but the essentThe formula that I'd like to cite is that what we call transcendence, the exit from oneself, the exit from oneself, is the human, and this exit from oneself is always the relationship we have with another man.